5 ms·

‘Play with my V spot’

35 points by shakes 14y ago

Uhhrrr 14y ago
I must confess, I flagged this article before clicking through because I thought it was using dumb innuendo, not vilifying it.
outside1234 14y ago
there is no bad press. by vilifying it, she's promoting it.
- pyre 14y ago
  > there is no bad press Does the following review qualify as good press: This product did not work at all once I bought it. I contacted the company to get a refund. The customer service person swore at me, called me an idiot, and told me to "get lost." Enraged, I found the contact information for the CEO. I appealed to the CEO that the product was non-functional. The CEO replied by email with a pornographic picture with the caption, "GO F**K YOURSELF!" I bet that company is going to rolling in the money due to all of the brand-recognition that they just got, right? </sarcasm>
steele 14y ago
And my sons will never feel comfortable in the cologne industry. :(
- danilocampos 14y ago
  Cologne is now a pillar of the future economy, is it?
  - steele 14y ago
    Consumer electronics are? I guess agriculture, civil engineering, manufacturing, law, etc can now be free to sexy it up when they are less important and have less attention in media echo chambers dedicated to those areas.
- marquis 14y ago
  Well, the first recorded chemist according to Wikipedia on Perfume is female, but almost every other citing after this is male. Is there a reason your sons could not enter the cologne industry as highly capable chemists?
  - steele 14y ago
    The unsavory advertising from the fringe
- esperluette 14y ago
  Many of the most prominent perfumers are men. Frederic Malle comes to mind, plus a large chunk of the ones on this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfumer#List_of_notable_perfumers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfumer#List_of_notable_perfum...
  - steele 14y ago
    They need to perform better oversight to their marketing departments!
baddox 14y ago
> Maybe the beholder doesn't think of women's body parts as playthings. Isn't that a valid use for many body parts, and a primary use for a few, regardless of gender? I don't think this marketing, by displaying legs and lips in the context of sensuality, is implying that other uses for legs (like running) or lips (like playing the harmonica) are any less valid.
- danilocampos 14y ago
  You've missed the point. The issue here is that the company's marketing pivots entirely around the desire to have sex with women. Which signals to, say, heterosexual women, that they are not a valid user of the depicted technology.
  - aidenn0 14y ago
    Of course if they get a net 10% bump in attention from male software engineers by this ad and a 99% drop in attention from female software engineers, then they probably net quite positive on this. Thus the male dominated industry self perpetuates.
  - baddox 14y ago
    Is the issue the desire to have sex with women itself, or the choice to market specifically to people that desire to have sex with women? I don't see anything wrong with either. And does it really hint to heterosexual women that they aren't a valid user of the technology? I certainly don't automatically assume that I'm not a valid user of a product when I see marketing directed at a demographic of which I'm not a member. I've bought laptops and tablets despite them being primarily shown in ads with college students or teenagers. I am tempted to think that the author has a specific problem with sexuality in marketing, not simply marketing that targets a specific demographic.
    - danilocampos 14y ago
      > I certainly don't automatically assume that I'm not a valid user of a product when I see marketing directed at a demographic of which I'm not a member. Did you have an Easy Bake Oven as a kid? > I don't see anything wrong with either. I know, that's part of the problem we've got, here.
pygorex 14y ago
As a straight male I guess I'm the target of this type of advertising. But I don't find it even remotely sexy or titillating. This is a shallow, junior-high level male teen deuche bag perspective on sexuality. God damn it's sad and just plain gross. What do ads like this say to me? What impression do I get of the company (Voco)? "Are you a dull, hyper-sexualized idiot? Do you treat women like trash are rarely get laid? If so you'll love Voco! Play with our V-spot, 'cuz that's the only action you're going to get!"
rb2k_ 14y ago
> Guys, this is why we don’t have more women in tech: It’s a cesspool. As long as we’re passing offensive schlock like this off as marketing for a major technology conference, we don’t deserve more women in tech Engineers don't design advertisement campaigns. Engineers aren't staffing booths at conventions.
- danilocampos 14y ago
  > Engineers don't design advertisement campaigns. You're totally right. I can't think of any technology companies with engineers in their leadership. Further, leadership never approves ad campaigns. Ads get designed and run no matter what the CEO thinks.
  - angryasian 14y ago
    i think the best technology companies are run by engineers , page and brin of google, zuckerberg of facebook, bezos of amazon.
jaddison 14y ago
First off, I'm not against women in the workforce, technology or otherwise; my wife is a project manager in a software company. And for the record, the ad in question is indeed tasteless by my standards, however... I'm no expert, but I know this: marketing is a game in which you're trying to turn heads. You calculate your odds of turning enough of the right heads with a given advertisement. You want to make people talk and remember you. From that perspective, the ad is brilliant. The marketing folks behind this ad obviously knew the demographic they were attempting to attract. They also knew that the ad would undoubtedly reach the inbox of people that don't fit their demographic, but even with negative feelings and press about it, the ad is still worthwhile for them. It achieved the desired effect: it shocks you into paying attention, rather than skimming. From another point of view, let's consider movies these days. A movie is its own marketing, its own advertisement. Violence and sex in movies have become much more graphic over the decades in order to: 1. compete with the plethora of other movies out there 2. overcome our desensitization to graphic imagery Do movies and ads like these that contain questionable messaging/content work? Yes. Would they work as well if they weren't as in-your-face? No. Are there other approaches rather than resorting to questionable content? Maybe, but the methods mentioned are tried and true. At least until our desensitization reaches abhorrent levels.
jerrya 14y ago
What does this have to do with "women in tech"? The ad was created by a female marketing puke and her advertising team that put together this promotion. It wasn't created by engineers, or physicists, or software developers, or occupations traditionally associated with tech. This could ad could have been about anything, because the woman in charge thinks that sex sells. It was created by people that are much more closely related to journalism, Venture Beat, than it is to tech. Also Patriarchy ain't a real thing. Lazy journalism is.
- DanBC 14y ago
  > What does this have to do with "women in tech"? A tech company commissions, approves, and delivers an advert for their product. Did the company have no input to the creatives? > Also Patriarchy ain't a real thing. Easier to say if you're not the one getting 81 cents to the dollar.
  - jerrya 14y ago
    Easier to say if you're not the one getting 81 cents to the dollar. That point has been debunked for just about forever now, including from Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor to Bill Clinton, and about as feminist friendly as a man could be. The net net being that if there is a gender wage gap, it's on the order of 6 cents to the dollar, not 23 or 19 cents. http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-answers-your-labor-questions/ http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-answers-... We also know that many if not most young female college graduates do better with salary than their male counterparts.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      Do you have a better source? Not being snarky, but a couple of sentences with no cites isn't particularly compelling. Especially when he starts by saying it's a rough estimate, and finishes by saying that the pay differential does exist, and is partly caused by bias and prejudice. > Q: I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the feminisation of poverty and the male-female wage differential. How much of that is due to career choice? > A: Rough estimate: About 50 percent of the differential has to do with different career choices made by women and men. Twenty-five percent involves greater time women spend on care-taking of children and elderly relatives. The other 25 percent is due to bias and prejudice in the labor market.
dizzystar 14y ago
This article is taking two points and conflating them together in a way that makes no sense at all: Good Point: Marketers, who in this case are predominantly male, are using hyper-sexuality to promote their image and their ad and are being insensitive to women, thus abandoning 50% of the possible customer base. This is a stupid, of course. Bad Point: Engineers are predominantly male because the marketers (an industry teaming with women) of this particular company are pigs. The author of this article is saying that women are chased away from programming because some CEO and CMO, both presumably male, sat in the office and beat their brains out trying to conjure up a good image and brand strategy for the company. Is she saying that some lowly engineer, with no MBA + Marketing should have the power to stop this, and even if she (he even?) speaks up, there is anything that will stop it? What proof does the author have that all the engineers working at this place are males and that maybe a girl or two worked on the website and thought it was a good idea? While I understand this article from an emotional stand-point, I am failing to understand it from a logical perspective. Here are a few reasons that girls aren't attracted to engineering: Boys receive Lego block and Lincoln Blocks. Girls receive prefab Barbie Doll houses and cars. Boys are told to play video games, which are all male-centric. Girls... Shoots and Latters? Girls are told that they shouldn't be good at math or science. Boys are told they should be good at math or science. This is all a much deeper cultural issue that sexuality is a veneer we use to hide the real issues. Marketing in general is lambasted for objectifying the female body, but that didn't stop droves of women going into marketing. Yeah, if sexuality was really the issue, then marketing would be 99% male also.
- jerrya 14y ago
  Good Point: Marketers, who in this case are predominantly male, are using hyper-sexuality to promote their image and their ad and are being insensitive to women, thus abandoning 50% of the possible customer base. This is a stupid, of course. No, this is a bad point. It is a point that at the least, needs a citation, re: the gender split of marketing professionals. Let me tell you, in my MBA program, the majority of marketing MBAs were women. It is also a bad point because in this case, the person that came up with this ad is a WOMAN. Ya, a female not a male marketer.
  - 14y ago
ucee054 14y ago
Let's imagine the outrage if they used a hunky Cosmo centre-fold "Nude Fireman" in their ads... <crickets/> ...feminists, cry me a river

35 points by shakes 14y ago

I must confess, I flagged this article before clicking through because I thought it was using dumb innuendo, not vilifying it.

outside1234 14y ago

there is no bad press. by vilifying it, she's promoting it.

pyre 14y ago
> there is no bad press Does the following review qualify as good press: This product did not work at all once I bought it. I contacted the company to get a refund. The customer service person swore at me, called me an idiot, and told me to "get lost." Enraged, I found the contact information for the CEO. I appealed to the CEO that the product was non-functional. The CEO replied by email with a pornographic picture with the caption, "GO F**K YOURSELF!" I bet that company is going to rolling in the money due to all of the brand-recognition that they just got, right? </sarcasm>

steele 14y ago

And my sons will never feel comfortable in the cologne industry. :(

danilocampos 14y ago
Cologne is now a pillar of the future economy, is it?
- steele 14y ago
  Consumer electronics are? I guess agriculture, civil engineering, manufacturing, law, etc can now be free to sexy it up when they are less important and have less attention in media echo chambers dedicated to those areas.
marquis 14y ago
Well, the first recorded chemist according to Wikipedia on Perfume is female, but almost every other citing after this is male. Is there a reason your sons could not enter the cologne industry as highly capable chemists?
- steele 14y ago
  The unsavory advertising from the fringe
esperluette 14y ago
Many of the most prominent perfumers are men. Frederic Malle comes to mind, plus a large chunk of the ones on this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfumer#List_of_notable_perfumers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfumer#List_of_notable_perfum...
- steele 14y ago
  They need to perform better oversight to their marketing departments!

baddox 14y ago

> Maybe the beholder doesn't think of women's body parts as playthings. Isn't that a valid use for many body parts, and a primary use for a few, regardless of gender? I don't think this marketing, by displaying legs and lips in the context of sensuality, is implying that other uses for legs (like running) or lips (like playing the harmonica) are any less valid.

danilocampos 14y ago
You've missed the point. The issue here is that the company's marketing pivots entirely around the desire to have sex with women. Which signals to, say, heterosexual women, that they are not a valid user of the depicted technology.
- aidenn0 14y ago
  Of course if they get a net 10% bump in attention from male software engineers by this ad and a 99% drop in attention from female software engineers, then they probably net quite positive on this. Thus the male dominated industry self perpetuates.
- baddox 14y ago
  Is the issue the desire to have sex with women itself, or the choice to market specifically to people that desire to have sex with women? I don't see anything wrong with either. And does it really hint to heterosexual women that they aren't a valid user of the technology? I certainly don't automatically assume that I'm not a valid user of a product when I see marketing directed at a demographic of which I'm not a member. I've bought laptops and tablets despite them being primarily shown in ads with college students or teenagers. I am tempted to think that the author has a specific problem with sexuality in marketing, not simply marketing that targets a specific demographic.
  - danilocampos 14y ago
    > I certainly don't automatically assume that I'm not a valid user of a product when I see marketing directed at a demographic of which I'm not a member. Did you have an Easy Bake Oven as a kid? > I don't see anything wrong with either. I know, that's part of the problem we've got, here.

pygorex 14y ago

As a straight male I guess I'm the target of this type of advertising. But I don't find it even remotely sexy or titillating. This is a shallow, junior-high level male teen deuche bag perspective on sexuality. God damn it's sad and just plain gross. What do ads like this say to me? What impression do I get of the company (Voco)? "Are you a dull, hyper-sexualized idiot? Do you treat women like trash are rarely get laid? If so you'll love Voco! Play with our V-spot, 'cuz that's the only action you're going to get!"

rb2k_ 14y ago

> Guys, this is why we don’t have more women in tech: It’s a cesspool. As long as we’re passing offensive schlock like this off as marketing for a major technology conference, we don’t deserve more women in tech Engineers don't design advertisement campaigns. Engineers aren't staffing booths at conventions.

danilocampos 14y ago
> Engineers don't design advertisement campaigns. You're totally right. I can't think of any technology companies with engineers in their leadership. Further, leadership never approves ad campaigns. Ads get designed and run no matter what the CEO thinks.
- angryasian 14y ago
  i think the best technology companies are run by engineers , page and brin of google, zuckerberg of facebook, bezos of amazon.

jaddison 14y ago

First off, I'm not against women in the workforce, technology or otherwise; my wife is a project manager in a software company. And for the record, the ad in question is indeed tasteless by my standards, however... I'm no expert, but I know this: marketing is a game in which you're trying to turn heads. You calculate your odds of turning enough of the right heads with a given advertisement. You want to make people talk and remember you. From that perspective, the ad is brilliant. The marketing folks behind this ad obviously knew the demographic they were attempting to attract. They also knew that the ad would undoubtedly reach the inbox of people that don't fit their demographic, but even with negative feelings and press about it, the ad is still worthwhile for them. It achieved the desired effect: it shocks you into paying attention, rather than skimming. From another point of view, let's consider movies these days. A movie is its own marketing, its own advertisement. Violence and sex in movies have become much more graphic over the decades in order to: 1. compete with the plethora of other movies out there 2. overcome our desensitization to graphic imagery Do movies and ads like these that contain questionable messaging/content work? Yes. Would they work as well if they weren't as in-your-face? No. Are there other approaches rather than resorting to questionable content? Maybe, but the methods mentioned are tried and true. At least until our desensitization reaches abhorrent levels.

jerrya 14y ago

What does this have to do with "women in tech"? The ad was created by a female marketing puke and her advertising team that put together this promotion. It wasn't created by engineers, or physicists, or software developers, or occupations traditionally associated with tech. This could ad could have been about anything, because the woman in charge thinks that sex sells. It was created by people that are much more closely related to journalism, Venture Beat, than it is to tech. Also Patriarchy ain't a real thing. Lazy journalism is.

DanBC 14y ago
> What does this have to do with "women in tech"? A tech company commissions, approves, and delivers an advert for their product. Did the company have no input to the creatives? > Also Patriarchy ain't a real thing. Easier to say if you're not the one getting 81 cents to the dollar.
- jerrya 14y ago
  Easier to say if you're not the one getting 81 cents to the dollar. That point has been debunked for just about forever now, including from Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor to Bill Clinton, and about as feminist friendly as a man could be. The net net being that if there is a gender wage gap, it's on the order of 6 cents to the dollar, not 23 or 19 cents. http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-answers-your-labor-questions/ http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/05/01/robert-reich-answers-... We also know that many if not most young female college graduates do better with salary than their male counterparts.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Do you have a better source? Not being snarky, but a couple of sentences with no cites isn't particularly compelling. Especially when he starts by saying it's a rough estimate, and finishes by saying that the pay differential does exist, and is partly caused by bias and prejudice. > Q: I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the feminisation of poverty and the male-female wage differential. How much of that is due to career choice? > A: Rough estimate: About 50 percent of the differential has to do with different career choices made by women and men. Twenty-five percent involves greater time women spend on care-taking of children and elderly relatives. The other 25 percent is due to bias and prejudice in the labor market.

dizzystar 14y ago

This article is taking two points and conflating them together in a way that makes no sense at all: Good Point: Marketers, who in this case are predominantly male, are using hyper-sexuality to promote their image and their ad and are being insensitive to women, thus abandoning 50% of the possible customer base. This is a stupid, of course. Bad Point: Engineers are predominantly male because the marketers (an industry teaming with women) of this particular company are pigs. The author of this article is saying that women are chased away from programming because some CEO and CMO, both presumably male, sat in the office and beat their brains out trying to conjure up a good image and brand strategy for the company. Is she saying that some lowly engineer, with no MBA + Marketing should have the power to stop this, and even if she (he even?) speaks up, there is anything that will stop it? What proof does the author have that all the engineers working at this place are males and that maybe a girl or two worked on the website and thought it was a good idea? While I understand this article from an emotional stand-point, I am failing to understand it from a logical perspective. Here are a few reasons that girls aren't attracted to engineering: Boys receive Lego block and Lincoln Blocks. Girls receive prefab Barbie Doll houses and cars. Boys are told to play video games, which are all male-centric. Girls... Shoots and Latters? Girls are told that they shouldn't be good at math or science. Boys are told they should be good at math or science. This is all a much deeper cultural issue that sexuality is a veneer we use to hide the real issues. Marketing in general is lambasted for objectifying the female body, but that didn't stop droves of women going into marketing. Yeah, if sexuality was really the issue, then marketing would be 99% male also.

jerrya 14y ago
Good Point: Marketers, who in this case are predominantly male, are using hyper-sexuality to promote their image and their ad and are being insensitive to women, thus abandoning 50% of the possible customer base. This is a stupid, of course. No, this is a bad point. It is a point that at the least, needs a citation, re: the gender split of marketing professionals. Let me tell you, in my MBA program, the majority of marketing MBAs were women. It is also a bad point because in this case, the person that came up with this ad is a WOMAN. Ya, a female not a male marketer.
- 14y ago

ucee054 14y ago

Let's imagine the outrage if they used a hunky Cosmo centre-fold "Nude Fireman" in their ads... <crickets/> ...feminists, cry me a river